A change has taken place at "Reprise!" The
series that used to call itself
"Broadway's Best in Concert" is now simply
subtitled, "Broadway's Best."
Inaugurating the new name is a production of
Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam that is
worthy of the decision to drop the "in
concert."

Don't get me wrong. Like all Reprise!
productions, Call Me Madam is
certainly not overflowing with magic
chandeliers, flying helicopters,
giraffes on stilts ... or even chairs,
when you get right down to it.
Indeed, if memory serves, this is the barest
set Reprise! has ever used. But
the presence of an eleven-member ensemble,
professionally delivering several dance
numbers -- combined with the fact that the
company was (with one
exception, discussed below) entirely off-
book -- made this much more than
simply a concert version of the musical.

That said, though, all of this is just icing
on the cake. Reprise! is about
getting good people to sing quality scores
that aren't frequently revived.
In that all-important department, Call Me
Madam scores.

The cast is led by Karen Morrow as Mrs.
Sally Adams, the Washington party
hostess appointed Ambassador to tiny
Lichtenburg. The role was created for
Ethel Merman, and Morrow delivers the songs
with a great combination of voice
and attitude.

The plot is a basic "girl meets boy"
story. In Call Me Madam, the boy for
Sally Adams is Cosmo Constantine, a
Lichtenburg politician, here played by
Michael Nouri. Nouri has a lovely voice,
and plays the romantic lead with just enough
formal dignity to counterbalance Morrow's
straight-forward Sally Adams.

The real surprises here are the second
bananas. Hugh Panaro, as Sally's young
assistant, Kenneth, and Melissa Dye, as
Lichtenburg's Princess Maria, are
simply wonderful, and work together
beautifully. Even in the context of this
concededly corny plot, there is real
chemistry between Panaro's eager Kenneth and
Dye's charming Maria.

Again, though, the voices are what matters.
Panaro shares the Irving Berlin classic,
"You're Just in Love" with Morrow, and
certainly holds up his end. As a matter of
fact, the two are evenly matched vocally,
and the end result is immensely satisfying.

Another high point of the show is the
second-act scene-stealer, "I Like Ike,"
led by Michael Tucci as the gravel-voiced
Republican Congressman. The song
is adorable, and Tucci makes the most of
every little dance step.

This production is not without its
weaknesses. Morrow, despite her spot-on
execution of the songs, is somewhat less
effective in the book scenes. Her
comic delivery is in the style of Carol
Burnett, but she doesn't have enough
oomph to really nail the jokes. Nor is
there much of a spark between Morrow
and Nouri. But, these are flaws in the
less-important elements of the show,
and don't really make it any less enjoyable.

The bottom line is that this Call Me
Madam is highly enjoyable, to the
point where missed laughs detract as
little as the minimal set. Indeed, the
shoestring quality of the production adds to
the light entertainment of this
trip to the theatre. The costumes, designed
by Noel Taylor, are a model of
efficiency. Short black evening dresses at
Sally's Washington parties become
Lichtenburg peasant frocks with the addition
of aprons. Noticing how Sally's evening
dress becomes three others is all part of
the fun.

Last Sunday the audience's good humor was
pushed to the limit, however, by
the production's failure to have
understudies for any roles beyond the four
leads. The role of the show's antagonist,
Sebastian Sebastian, usually
played by Paul Keith, was filled by John
Bowab, the show's director. Bowab
carried a script throughout, did not act his
lines at all, and still managed
to get half of them wrong. He had the good
sense to be self-mocking about
it, and the audience let him off the hook
for what could have been cause to
storm the box office and demand a refund.
Memo to artistic director Marcia Seligson:
Along with dropping the phrase "in concert"
comes the
responsibility to deliver productions fully
stocked with prepared actors.
Reprise! has a relationship with UCLA, and
should be able to find some
students eager to be swing understudies for
its productions. There is no
doubt that a theatre student who had learned
the script and sat in on
rehearsals could have done a better job
filling in than the director did. John
Bowab's bungled script-reading could have
been disastrous, in a production of
less overall quality than this Call Me
Madam.

Ben Elton's Olivier Award-winning play,
Popcorn, tells the story of an
ultra violent film director who is taken
hostage in his home by a pair of
serial murderers like those celebrated in
his films. It is a comedy.

It is, actually, more than a comedy.
Popcorn also raises serious issues
regarding our society's glorification of
violence, and our willingness to assign
blame for criminal activity to anyone but
the criminal. The ideas are thought-
provoking, though not entirely
groundbreaking. The success of the play depends
on its ability to keep its comedy and its
conscience together. The trick here is to
get us to laugh, and then be
ashamed that we were laughing. The current incarnation at the El Portal
Center for the Arts, in North
Hollywood, Popcorn is not successful at achieving this balance.

The
problem, it appears, is that the
people on stage do not seem to be in
agreement as to the nature of the piece.
The play is dominated by David Faustino as
Wayne, one of the notorious "mall
murderers." Faustino plays Wayne straight,
and the choice works. While
there is occasional humor in Wayne's
dialogue, Faustino never lets you forget
that Wayne is a killer with his finger on
the trigger. Faustino's portrayal
effectively walks the line between
calculated violence and random brutality.

At his side is Jill Marie Simon as Scout,
Wayne's "trailer trash" girfriend
and partner "mall murderer." Simon paints
Scout with a broad brush. She
gives Scout the pigeon-toed stance of a shy
four-year-old, leading one to
question whether she even has the motor
coordination to hold a gun. Scout's
lines indicate that she is well-capable of
polysyllabic speech, but her
manner contradicts this. She is, in short,
a caricature of the dumb
girlfriend who gets turned on by the
killings, and she doesn't fit in the
same play as Faustino's Wayne.

The rest of the cast supports neither
interpretation. Maxwell Caulfield
plays Bruce, the film director. The
character is obviously modelled after
Quentin Tarantino, but Caulfield supplies
none of Tarantino's boyish
enthusiasm. Numerous interpretations of
Bruce might have been convincing,
but Caulfield's underplayed restraint does
not comfortably share the stage
with either Faustino's realistic edginess or
Simon's over-the-top
dimwittedness.

It goes on. The climactic scene of the play
appears to be written as farce.
The comedy reaches a lunatic pitch, and two
half-naked characters (requisite
for farce) make their appearance. In this
mix, Julie Cobb, playing Bruce's
soon-to-be-ex-wife Farrah, has one
ridiculous line after another: She cares
more about how the hostage situation will
affect her property settlement than her
life; and when her daughter (played by
Cobb's real-life daughter, Rosemary Morgan)
is threatened with a blow to the face,
Farrah pleads, "Not the nose; it's new!"
Even the most self-centered person would not
say these lines in reality; they can work
only in farce. But the scene is not
directed as farce, and Cobb's attempts to
send these lines out of the mouth of a real
person in a real situation fall painfully
flat. At this point in the play, one
wonders whether Simon didn't have the right
idea after all. The material here is funny;
it cries out for bigger-than-life execution
and fast pacing. It gets neither in this
production.

Before the play began, the house manager
walked on stage and delivered a
speech inviting the audience to accept the
play with an open mind. He gave
us a theatrical history lesson, identifying
plays that were originally
rejected by audiences and critics for their
unconventional subject matter,
but were subsequently recognized as
classics. He assured us of his belief
that Popcorn would someday join this
pantheon. Such pretentiousness proved
woefully unjustified. Popcorn might
be a good play, it might even be a
disturbing play, but it is not an earth-shattering play. The El Portal
should recognize the more likely possibility
that the lukewarm reaction to its production
of Popcorn is not due to any
explosive message of the play, but its
misfire of a production.